This site examines the life and work of David Crockett
Graham, a missionary, anthropologist, educator and collector who worked in China’s
Sichuan province between the years of 1911 and 1948.As a Westerner working in China during an
extremely tumultuous period – his career there was bookended by two
revolutions – Graham provides an interesting view into the encounter between
the cultures of the “East” and “West.”Graham created representations of China’s people through his work, as
both a scientist and a missionary, and this study seeks to determine the
extent to which Graham’s images fit the pattern of “Orientalism.”This terms refers to the way Western
culture was able to exert power over the Orient by producing the “Oriental” –
a idealized figure with essential qualities inferior to the Westerner and his
culture.How did the work of Graham
and his colleagues conceive of the East for Western readers?To what extent did their representations
support Western power?

[a1]This
photo appeared in D.C. Graham’s article, “An Excavation at Suifu,” which
appeared in the eighth issue of Journal
West China Border Research Society (1936).Graham is standing third from the left.